AI is spreading into everything. Every company wants agents. Every startup is talking about automation. Every workflow is being centered around models, tools, and software doing more of the work.
But theres a very obvious counter-movement. The return to analogue.
People are buying vinyl. Independent bookstores are growing again. Run clubs are exploding. People are deleting apps, turning off notifications, buying dumb phones, and talking about wanting more “real life.” I’d argue half of my friends just want to be economically free, move onto a farm, travel, raise animals, purvey land and live the good life. Brands are starting to say their work is human made, handmade, analog, local, or AI-free.
That is the barbell.
On one side, AI becomes infrastructure. It handles search, writing, scheduling, coding, support, paperwork, analysis, and a lot of the repetitive work that used to burn time and frankly, kind of suck.
On the other side, the physical and human world becomes more valuable. Real places. Real people. Real stores. Real tools. Real photos. Real conversations. Real craft. Real work.
The middle of the barbell is noman’s land, and that’s where you’ll get crushed.
The middle is generic digital stuff. Generic content. Generic SaaS. Generic ads. Generic brands. Generic newsletters. Generic images. Generic “thought leadership.” AI makes the generic infinite. And when something becomes infinite, it gets cheap.
I do not think the backlash is really against AI itself. It is against fake. It is against synthetic junk, slop art, bad voice, video and the poisoning of the human creative effort.
It is against companies removing the human part and pretending nothing was lost, while having a complete and utter disregard for communities, energy consumption, and environmental protections.
Most people are not mad if a mechanic or platform uses AI to find the right page in a service manual. They are mad if a brand replaces its entire creative process with fake images and fake people. They are not mad if a contractor uses AI to understand a code requirement faster to fix a boiler. They are mad if every article, email, ad, and website starts to sound like it came out of the same machine (EM DASH!).
That distinction matters.
There is AI as leverage, and there is AI as slop. AI as leverage helps someone do real work better. AI as slop floods the world with more stuff nobody asked for.
The internet made distribution infinite. AI is making production infinite. So the scarce thing now is proof.
Proof you were there.
Proof you know what you are talking about.
Proof a real person made it.
Proof the thing works outside the demo.
Proof it holds up in the field.
That is why I think the next decade will not be purely digital. It will be this beautiful barbell economy.
The boring work gets automated. The meaningful work gets more human, and the human work gets potentially more valuable.
The best companies will use AI in the background while making the front end feel more real, more useful, and more connected to the physical world. The worst companies will use AI to make cheap copies of things that used to have taste, effort, or trust behind them.
This is the vision I keep seeing played out:
AI for the parts of life that should be faster, and analog for the parts of life that should stay human.
I hope Camera Search can hold true to this, and play its part at both ends of the barbell.
-Pete